History Note
Institutions ‘grew’
gentlemen farmers
by Luther Granquist
In 1901, the Minnesota Legislature
established the Board of Control to manage the state institutions
and prisons and required the board to meet regularly with the superintendents
and wardens to consider “in
detail” methods to secure “economical management.” At quarterly
conferences, they often discussed how best to manage the farms at their institutions.
These “farming industries,” as Superintendent A.C. Rogers from the
Faribault State School and Hospital referred to them in a paper he presented
in 1914, provided needed support for the institutions and real work for some
of the residents.
The reports of these conferences show that the psychiatrists and doctors who
ran the institutions became gentlemen farmers with strong opinions about which
cow was the better “milch cow” and whether oxen or horses should
be used for hauling. In 1909, after presentations by university professors on
how to get maximum milk yield from dairy herds, Dr. Harry Tomlinson, the superintendent
of St. Peter State Hospital, responded that “cows must be studied individually,
if we are going to deal with them intelligently.” He observed that some
characteristics of cows indicate a “defect in the nervous system” that “may
be aggravated by lack of intelligence on the part of the herdsman.” He
discussed “the influence of the environment upon the health of the cow” and
warned of the harm from having one hundred cows in a barn “without a supply
of good air and sunshine.”
The institutions’ residents who worked on these farms did receive good
air and sunshine, although usually without pay. Unfortunately, then, and for
decades that followed, herd care in understaffed and overcrowded buildings was
all that many institution residents received. ![]()
The History Note is a monthly column sponsored by the
Minnesota Governor’s Council on Developmental Disabilities,
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