by Kelly Burton, Film Archivist
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| Machinery
in the Campbell Farming Co. fields (collection PAc 91-86) |
The life of agriculturalist Thomas D. Campbell was largely defined
by the merging of farming practices with those of large-scale business. Born in
Grand Forks, North Dakota, Campbell applied his engineering education to the
mechanizing of a 95,000-acre wheat farm on land leased from the Crow and Fort
Peck reservations in Montana. As special adviser to the Soviet government in
1929, he assisted in the agricultural development of 10 million acres as part
of Joseph Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan. Campbell subsequently served as a
farming advisor to the British government and to the French government in
Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. He entered the U.S. Army as a lieutenant colonel
in World War II at the age of sixty and was later named as a permanent
brigadier general of the honorary U.S. Army Reserve by President Dwight D.
Eisenhower. Montana historian Joseph Kinsey Howard described Campbell as the
“acknowledged ‘wheat king of the world’ and one of the most theatrical figures
in public life” in 1949, stating that “praise and castigation have been equally
intemperate and few have been able to make sense out of his complex character.”
(1)
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| Thomas Campbell (left) greeting a farm visitor at the train station (collection PAc 91-86) |
As a pioneer of industrialized corporate farming in the
early decades of the twentieth century, Thomas Campbell distinguished his
Hardin, Montana farming business by producing more wheat than any other. He
expressed his approach to agriculture in the June 1928 issue of The Magazine of Business: “Farming
should be considered as a manufacturing business, with a proper record of costs
and a constant endeavor to reduce these costs. (2) There is no doubt but that
the greatest industrial opportunity in the United States today is in
agriculture and the biggest opportunity for the technical college man is in
agricultural engineering. Some day there will be a farming organization
comparable in size to United States Steel or General Motors, for food is the
most necessary commodity of all.” (3)
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| Battling a straw stack fire at Campbell Farming Co. (collection PAc 91-86) |
The films that comprise the Montana Historical Society’s
Campbell Farming Co. collection were shot between the mid-1920s and the early-1930s,
and they demonstrate what Campbell considered one of his major contributions to
industrial agriculture: the windrow method of harvesting. Doug Edwards, a
Campbell Fellow researching in the MHS Archives, described Campbell’s
orchestration of large-scale activities for the cameras: “The sequence of
starting the combines, cutting the grain, and making a turn gives the
impression of manufacturing precision: the farm as a factory. Campbell’s use of
the movies to advertise his farming operations demonstrates his ability as a
promoter. The ‘enginemen’ operated the tractors and combines in precise
sequence for the cameraman, and Campbell had the cameraman focus on specific
steps of the operation when he demonstrated his windrow method.” (4) In
addition to recording harvesting activities, the films show other day-to-day
operations such as the modification and repairing machinery in the company shop
and battling the occasional fire in the farm’s straw stacks. Campbell can be
seen throughout these films, greeting guests at the nearby Montana train
station, eating lunch with his field crew, and traveling around the farm in his
Stutz-Bearcat convertible.
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| Farmers in Russia (collection PAc91-86) |
While the primary function of the Campbell Farming Co. films
was the promotion of industrialized and mechanized agricultural practices,
Campbell also used the motion picture camera to document more personal moments
with his wife and children. His daughters can be seen enjoying several outdoor
activities in these reels, riding horses on their father’s Montana farm and
visiting what is presumably the Columbia Gardens amusement park in Butte. Several
members of the Campbell family also accompany the agriculturalist on his return
consultation trip to Russia in 1930. Footage from this excursion shows the
family making the ocean voyage, visiting various ports of call, and engaging
with locals as they travel to farm sites across the Soviet Union.
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| Campbell's daughters on the Campbell Farming Co. property (collection PAc 91-86) |
The Campbell Farming Co. films were donated to the Montana
Historical Society by Phoebe Knapp Warren, Thomas Campbell’s granddaughter, on September
4, 1991. Originally shot by both Campbell and a larger production crew on 35mm cellulose
nitrate film, the deteriorating and hazardous reels were transferred to new
polyester stock in the late 1990s with the help of a Cultural/Aesthetic Project
grant funded by the Montana Cultural Trust Fund. VHS copies of the films were
created during the transfer to new stock, and these cassettes are available for
viewing in the Historical Society’s Research Center.
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| Film production assistant with Campbell (front, center) and his work crew (collection PAc 91-86) |
- Joseph Kinsey Howard, “Tom Campbell: Farmer of
Two Continents,’ Harper’s Magazine,
March 1949: 56.
- Thomas D. Campbell, “What the Farmer Really
Needs,” The Magazine of Business,
June 1928: 725.
- Ibid. 752.
- MHS vertical file, Campbell Farms.
