My second source that I chose is a research paper of agricultural production during the war here in Eau Claire County. It is written by Prof. Kate Long of the history department here at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. I chose this source because it provides information about agricultural production, industrial production, and military service as well. It has a lot of information packed into it. It answers a lot of my research questions as well. For this blog post, I will just talk about the agricultural production.
This article has a lot of invented ethos. Prof. Long used a lot of sources. Most of them came from the archives. She also uses a large rhetorical distance. She typed the paper as if we didn’t know anything about the war. She provides a two page intro just talking about the end of WWI and the underlying reasons behind WWII. Then she talks about how the county came to be, and how the city became what it was during the war. Prof. Long typed the paper as if the readers were in fifth grade.
Prof. Long wrote a total encompassing paper on what Eau Claire was like during World War II. Her main focus was the agricultural production during the War, but she had to give background on the industry in Eau Claire because the factories were pulling workers from the farms. She had to give military info because there were no men working on the farms. They all enlisted into the army. The agricultural work force was depleted. Farmers had to get prison inmates to work on their farms. There was even a man in Rice Lake that had 200 German prisoners of war working on his farm.
Like I said earlier she, I think by accident, wrote a complete research paper on what Eau Claire was like during World War II. She wanted to write a paper just on agricultural production, but as she researched she wrote on more than just agriculture. She wrote a total reseach paper. I cannot think of an against the grain comment. She has so many sources that it makes it totally believable. I do not doubt anything that is in that article.
This impacts my research dramatically because now have a list of websites, books, and names of archival collections that I can look at for my article. I do not want to rip off any research from this paper. Even though its title makes it seem like it’s on just agriculture, but it’s not. This paper is what I had in mind for my paper. Now for my paper I want to focus more on the industrial side of the war effort. It seems like the industry here, in Eau Claire, really impacted the war effort. The ammunitions factory really produced a lot. That is what I want to research for my next blog post. My main question I want to answer next is what kind of ammunition did the factory manufacture? Another question is in a ranking of top factories in the country at that time how did the one in Eau Claire rank?
The topic of your research paper is interesting. I would find it very interesting to know what business were actually involved in helping with productions of WWII. I myself have some good knowledge on WWII, but have never read anything pertaining to your research topic on the area. I was unaware that “prisoners” and “POW’s were used for farm labor (cool fact). I am curious on if you plan to interview a local WWII Vet. I think it would not only be a great resource for your paper, but would be a good experience itself to sit down and hear stories about a topic like WWII from someone that actually was involved…not to mention you would probably make that mans day, because if he’s anything like my grandfather who is also a WWII Vet, he would probably thrilled to tell the stories of what he experienced.
I am currently learning about what it was like in the U.S. during wartime and was wondering what it was like in a smaller community instead of the nation as a whole. Because this is more specific to an area that I am in now (Eau Claire), this just got that much more interesting! And the fact that it was written and not just a story passed down, this source makes things more believable.