Frontier Theory and the Mining Experience
(H399 CSUF)
If used in moderation, the frontier theory is a valid hypothesis useful and essential in understanding the development of America and the character of its people. A study of the mining experience throughout the Far West tends to support the theory on most previously debated points. Additionally, an examination of the mining west, a largely ignored yet significant subfield of western history brings new concepts and insights to the frontier theory that vitalize it generally while challenging aspects of it superfically and insuring us that the debate is far from over.
The frontier hypothesis proposed by Frederick Jackson Turner before the American Historical Association’s annual convention in June of 1893 was that “the existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development.”[1] As oversimplified as that statement is, it served his purpose well, for Turner wished “...simply to call attention to the frontier as a fertile field for investigation, and to suggest some of the problems which arise in connection with it.”[2]
His thoughts on the frontier, if first delivered only to counterbalance the then prevailing ideas of a European explanation for American development, soon became an explanation in and of itself of the American experience. Whether or not this was Turner’s intent or merely the result of his overzealous disciples, the theory became by the twentieth century “...virtually unquestioned as the Holy Writ of American historiography.”[3] It reigned as such until the 1930s when feelings “...that the Republic was not what it used to be led to the suspicion that it never had been...”[4] and social scientists sought new explanations for all the world’s problems. One of the first arguments against the theory in the 1930s came from Benjamin F. Wright, a professor of government at Harvard.
Wright declared that the theory’s greatest shortcoming was that it isolated the growth of American development from the course western civilization. American democracy was a product of European roots or “germs” developing in American soil. The soil affected those germs and caused that they developed into a distinctly American product but Wright correctly reminded the followers of Turner that in order for democracy to grow in that special soil of the frontier, it had to have been carried there first.[5]
Over the years from 1930 to 1950 the frontier theory was attacked from two angles. The first concentrated on the way Turner stated his thesis, criticizing him for a lack of firm definitions and the poetic qualities of his prose. Richard Hofstadter claimed the vagueness of his definitions made the theory a blunt instrument.[6] The term frontier, for example, was considered ‘elastic’ by Turner and meant a place, a process, a form of society. To claim that the development of American society is explained by a form of society is redundant. However, the use of a single term with many meanings does not assume vagueness. According to Harry C. Allen, Turner’s magic was that he made the word ‘frontier’ the key to so much.[7] Indeed, Turner’s flexibility in thought (according to Jackson Putnam) has given the theory “...an elusive, glittering, timeless quality that makes it ultimately impervious to the acids of behavioral analysis and largely unyielding to the pressures of formal logic.”[8]
The second angle of attack focuses in on a specific aspect of the theory and then analyzes it in detail. It was claimed that the frontier fostered democracy, was a fertile field for developing an American nationalism and American traits; stimulated social mobility and acted as a safety valve in relieving Eastern tension with the inducement of free land. each of these ideas were soon being picked apart.
Democracy was claimed to have grown easily in the frontier and that primitive conditions brought every man to a common level thus breeding democracy. Others were quick to point out prejudice, vigilance committees and an attitude of waste and conquest toward nature and called what developed anarchy. Traits like individualism, optimism, aggressiveness, ambition, idealism, faith in democracy were attributed to the frontier as their source while some suggested that these traits stem from our economic abundance, migration habits, and the Protestant religious influence.[9]
All of the counter arguments as to the source of these traits hold much validity. The economic abundance theory claims that the key to our American character is in our unique economic stature. However, the frontier must have played a supporting role in lifting us up to that stature and so cannot be dismissed completely. Our migration not only from east to west but north to south, farm to city and across class lines have played an important part in shaping our character. The idea is hardly at odds with the frontier theory which claims an expansion (or migration) westward helps explain ourselves as Americans. Even the Protestant influence found its most favorable breeding ground in the frontier, whose non-religious populous, it might be added, shared the same traits.[10]
The frontier was also claimed to promote social mobility by being a safety valve for Eastern discontent. Free land provided an opportunity for those who so chose to break out of the political, social, or economic chains in the East to become an equal partner in the building of a new West. These generalizations and the whole theory of free land as a safety valve for industrial labor were declared invalid and totally dead in 1945 by Fred Shannon.
His research led him to the conclusion that “. . .at least twenty farmers moved to town for each industrial laborer who moved to the land and ten sons of farmers went to the city for each one who became the owner of a new farm anywhere in the Nation.”[11] The safety valve in his eyes worked in reverse. The rapid growth of the cities provided a release from surplus farm population. Further studies have proven that urban laborers lacked the capital and the skills required to farm the frontier; that the land was far from being cheap; and that migration westward slowed down during depressionary periods.[12]
Like a greased pig, the reverse safety valve theory slipped out of Shannon’s grip with the appearance of Ellen von Nardoff’s thoughts in 1962.[13] To her, it no longer mattered whether Eastern laborers went west to farms, just so long as someone did to increase their productivity over what they would have been in the East. Western lands weren’t cheap--but she pointed out that they were less expensive that Eastern lands. Although the growth of the cities was largely due to the productivity of eastern industry, it was the expansion into the West that provided the commodities needed to balance our international payments and provide capital to develop those eastern enterprises. Although not overwhelming, migration westward was sufficient enough to support the extractive industries that benefitted the entire nation. A final point brought up by von Nardoff was the possibility that the symbol or idea of the frontier may have been just as successful in relieving discontent no matter what the reality. If people believed that an opportunity existed they would act and react (as laborer or businessman) just as if it did. The frontier in their mind would be held as an option or bargaining tool whether the option was really within their reach or not.
A study of the mining frontier begins to establish a much stronger case for the frontier theory than has previously been allowed during the past half-century of debate. A plethora of agricultural frontier examples have dominated the field and have been abundantly used on either side of the debate. The mining experience throughout the American West has been strangely neglected as a field of study even though it was “. . .one of the great central facts of western history.”[14] Its neglect in respect to frontier theory is by no means the fault of Turner. He was well aware of its importance and jointly encouraged with Frederic Paxon the research and publication of the first twentieth century scholarly study of any aspect of the western mining boom.[15] Turner’s essay encouraged further inquiry into frontier theory, and when viewed in relation to the mining frontier the theory holds up well. Democracy, nationalism, distinctive traits, social mobility, and an escape from Eastern discontent are concepts which are hardly foreign to the mining frontier.
Billington examines the mining frontier in the light of the frontier theory[16] and concludes that their own brand of democracy was highly individualistic, freed from eastern control and adapted to frontier conditions. Individuals reluctantly joined together to form a governing body only after it became necessary due to the population and percentage of outcasts present. The first signs of democracy took the form of the mass meeting whereby each miner had a say in the election of officers to a mining district which usually concerned itself only with administrative rules for claim staking and recording. Justice was enforced and delivered by committee. Democracy on the mining frontier was simple,effective, and very democractic. It was carried by miners across the west and prevailed over eastern policies and precedents. Even the national mining laws of 1866 recognized the right of prospectors to make their own laws and was “. . .one of the few congressional statutes in the history of the frontier that did not try to inflict eastern institutions on the West.”[17]
A common motivation for being there, a general equality in stature, age, race, and marital status all combined to provide a feeling of brotherhood on the mining frontier which quickly led to nationalism. A foreign visitor to Colorado in the late 1850s once commented that if a hundred Americans were to gather together on the frontier they would soon start to lay out a city, write a state constitution, apply for admission to the Union while twenty-five would run for Congress.”[18]
Richard Peterson provided a detailed look at the frontier thesis and social mobility on the mining frontier and through a study of fifty mining entrepreneur concluded that although the west practiced discrimination it was more democractic than the east in extending opportunities for success. His detailed look into the careers of these men support Turner’s thesis that the frontier promoted vertical social mobility.[19]
Finally, who is to argue that 250,000 people rushing to California in the early 1850s, 100,000 people to Colorado by the late 1850s, 10,000 in Idaho by the 1860s, 20,000 in Montana did not have any effect on the Eastern economic community? Certainly not everyone could afford or endure the journey west but the mining frontier benefited both participant and spectator materially and mentally. Merchants, miners, editors, lawyers, saloon keepers, dance hall girls all viewed the mining west as the land of opportunity and for them it was; while prospectors had a marvelous time chasing rainbows. In the east, spectators made fortunes outfitting the argonauts and enviously watched the steam from America’s safety valve being put to such colorful and cosmopolitan exploits.
While so enthusiastically supporting the frontier thesis, several aspects of the mining experience superfically challenge parts of Turner’s original essay. Rodman Paul hints that Turner may not have seen how drastically mining disrupted the regular advance of the frontier.[20] Turner painted a picture of fur hunter leading pioneer farmer leading other farmers leading town builders into the frontier. In the Far West it was the prospector and miner who led the way and later encouraged the farmer and town builder to put down roots. Lastly, Turner’s frontier distinctively moved from east to west but because of California’s initial gold discovery the mining frontier generally moved from west to east.[21]
The mining frontier’s apparent instability and assumed wastefulness may appear to discredit its own importance but it cannot be said by pointing out undesirable traits that the mining frontier did not have an important effect on American development. Turner’s weakest point, it has been said, was his lack of comparative frontier study.[22] Carlos Prieto has already finished a study of mining in the new world (Latin America) that identifies much in common with the two frontiers and their influence upon its occupants and the nations that tried controlling the frontier.[23]
Turner may have assumed that pioneering ended with the closing of the frontier in 1890. He tried in later research to come to grips with a closed frontier.[24] Jackson Putnam of CSUF suggests that a study should now be made of the symbolic frontier and the conflict raging within each pioneer of wishing freedom and wealth, escape from society’s restraints and of rising to a higher position within those restraints.[25] No better place to study this can be found than in the mining experience where the myth or reality of opportunity was the strongest, and the interaction between freedom and wealth was the greatest.
[1]Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York, 1962), p.1.
[2]Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” American Historical Association Annual Report for the Year 1893 (Washington, D.C., 1894) p.200.
[3]Ray Allen Billington, ed., The Frontier Thesis (New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1966), p.3.
[4]Ellen von Hardroff, “The American Frontier as a Safety Valve: The life, death, reincarnation and justification of a Theory, “ Agricultural History 36 (July 1962): 123
[5]Benjamin F. Wright, “American Democracy and the Frontier,” The Yale Review 20 (December 1930): 349-365
[6]Ray Allen Billington, p.102.
[7]Ibid, p.108.
[8]Jackson Putnam, “The Turner Thesis and the Westward Movement: A Reappraisal,” Western Historical Quarterly 7 (October 1976): 384.
[9]Ibid, p. 395.
[10]Ibid.
[13]Ellen von Nardoff, pp. 123-142.
[14]Rodman Paul, “A Tenderfoot Discovers there once was a Mining West.” Western Historical Quarterly 10 (January 1979): 8.
[15]Turner and Paxon supervised William J. Trimble’s doctoral dissertation which developed into The Minng Advance into the Inland Empire, a pioneering monograph on mining in the Northwest.
[17]Ibid, p. 624.
[18]Ibid.
[19]Richard
Peterson, The Bonanza Kings: The Social
Origins and Business Behavior of Western Mining Entrepeneurs,
[20]Rodman Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1974) p. 15 (California); p. 40 (Colorado); p. 143 (Idaho, Montana).
[22]Ray Allen Billington, ed., Frontier Thesis, frontispiece.
[23]See Carlos Prieto’s Mining in the New World (New York: McGraw Hill, 1973) esp. chapters 7, 9, and 10.
[25]Ibid, p. 398.