Barbed wire is something I’ve been exposed to all my life. It is an integral part of the farm that conjures up memories of painful pokes and scratches as I tried to get in (or out) of a pasture or field. I never really considered it a part of anything but agriculture. But as I read about the background of this product, I found out that not only does barbed wire reach beyond farming in terms of use, it has played a part in changing history and the lives of many. Here are some interesting tidbits regarding barbed wire whose creations began with many men before 1863. It wasn’t until November 1974 however, that a patent was awarded to Joseph Glidden:
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As ranchers living in the American West used this wire to keep out both animal and human predators, the need for cowboys who spent their days herding cattle over the open plains for food and water diminished. The frontier was pushed further west, and disgruntled cowboys called barbed wire “devil’s rope”.
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Native Americans also suffered as land was enclosed, thus crippling the traditional migration and hunting patterns of the tribes and the buffalo herds they followed. They were eventually forced to settle on reservations.
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About a decade after it’s beginning, barbed wire found its way into the military. Used for keeping people out of land claimed by the opposition, to line the trenches in WWI, and to keep people in concentration camps. US Steel produced nearly 3 million miles of barbed wire during WWI.
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Train companies continue to run barbed wire fences along the side of railways as a way of deterring members of the public from accessing rail tracks, and many other companies also use barbed wire as a means of deterring potential thefts from their property. It’s also used in today’s prisons.
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Movies and books have been written using barbed wire as a central (if unnamed) character: A Man Without a Star (Kirk Douglas), The Wire Cutters (E. Moore Davis), Devil Wire (Cameron Judd). Symbolically, barbed wire has represented protest against things like oppression, communism and human rights abuses.
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It was used as a method of suicide by Jews, Roma, Sinti, and others trying to control their destiny during WWII. They called this action “embracing the wire”, choosing to throw themselves on the often electrified wire to avoid extermination practices by the Third Reich.
Barbed wire is just one of the few inventions that has changed very little and still remains current. All Joseph Glidden wanted to accomplish was keeping animals contained… I wonder what he would think today about his invention that has crossed the agricultural, political, military and economic domains of society?
-Terry Olson, Titan Machinery
References:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/09/26/the-tangled-history-barbed-wire/rpSHBoMNNohbaDAY8iSp7JJ/story.html
http://www.gliddenhomestead.org/barbedwire_impact.html