The Farmer's Benevolent Trust

“To chronicle this complex history, a scholar must be sophisticated in economics, law, and agricultural politics. Fortunately, Woeste brings a very good level of understanding of these diverse but essential topics to her history. . . . A comprehensive, historical case study of the complex problems — legal, economic, and social — that confronted and still confront American commercial agriculture.” — Law and History Review

“An important contribution to economic and business history and one whose main and specific arguments will be debated at length. . . . The study is a valuable contribution to establishing agriculture as a realistic participant in a modernising economy.” — Business History

“Woeste skillfully weaves legal, business, and agricultural history. . . . A well researched, well-argued book. . . . An excellent contribution to the study of the transformation of American agriculture during the first part of the twentieth century.” — American Historical Review

“Woeste’s richly nuanced and tightly argued ten chapters deliver a new understanding of the cooperative movement and horticulture in California. Moreover, by shunning simplistic assumptions she exposes flaws in much theory-based history of agriculture’s place in the national market revolution.” — Agricultural History

“[A] concise, intelligent study. . . . Unsettles even the most sophisticated reader’s sentimental notions about traditional nineteenth-century farm cooperatives. . . . An important contribution to understanding the transformations of agriculture in the twentieth century, through an articulate, detailed, multidisciplinary analysis of legal and social history.” — Journal of American History

“An important contribution to economic and business history and one whose main and specific arguments will be debated at length. . . . A valuable contribution to establishing agriculture as a realistic participant in a modernising economy.” — Business History

“This fascinating book offers insights that are vital to understanding American agricultural history and more especially its politics. . . . Woeste writes an incisive, well-told, thoroughly researched, legally important history in a story-like fashion.” — CHOICE

“Woeste deftly shifts back and forth between the tale of the legal transformation of agricultural cooperation at the macro-level and, at the micro-level, the story of California Associated Raisin Company, which — despite its tacit encouragement of night-riding mobs and emulation of J. P. Morgan — moved mountains to cultivate the image of itself as the prototypical 'benevolent trust' with which 'Jesus would sign up.' Beautifully written and exhaustively researched, The Farmer’s Benevolent Trust deserves the attention of legal, economic, political, and cultural historians.” — Laura Kalman, University of California, Santa Barbara