It's not possible to know for certain who read the serialized fiction in farm periodicals. It would probably be easier to describe the intended readers, but here again caution is required, for the author's intended audience would not necessarily have been identical with the editors' intended audience, and the editors themselves were not unified actors, as each magazine would have had multiple editors infuencing the story's final presentation, including fiction editors, section editors, managing editors, directing editors and so forth (for a glimpse at the work of an editorial staff, see the short article "How the Editors Do It" and its companion piece, "With Our Field Editors").
Furthermore, a story's readership would have been determined in part by how the magazine was distributed. Most farm periodicals relied heavily on subscriptions, and subscription patterns were in turn influenced by marketing strategies like advertisements in other magazines, subscription clubs (see for example Prairie Farmer's subscription club offerings), and subscription premiums (see for example Farm, Field and Fireside's Premium List from December 1902). Professional subscription agents were also crucial (see "Agents Wanted" from Farmer's Review).1 A story's final readership would have been shaped in no small measure by factors such as where these subscription agents chose to solicit subscriptions, and--just as importantly--where they chose not to solicit them. We'll probably never know how these agents presented the magazines to potential readers, but these kinds of marketing strategies would have played some rôle in influencing who read a story, and even to some extent how those people read it.
A good place to begin researching readership is with the text itself. Serialized fiction often appeared towards the end of an issue, in or near sections like "Household" or "The Lady of the Farm", suggesting they were intended for women (see, for example, "The Old House at Home" by Hezekiah Butterworth, pubished in Prairie Farmer's "Home Magazine Section"). There are plenty of exceptions, though: the Prairie Farmer gives marquee treatment to some of its fiction, publishing it just below the magazine masthead ("The Romance of a Kernel of Corn" by Harvey J. Sconce), and in Farmers' Review you'll find adventure stories geared towards men (see "Packsaddle and Canoe" by Lewis B. Miller). When looking at serialized fiction in the farm periodicals, be sure to consult the full page view: what kinds of advertisements surround the piece? Where in the issue does the editor place the story? Does it share the page with other articles (household tips, commodity prices)? What are the illustrations like? These textual features can provide clues to the kinds of people who were intended to read the stories--although they tell us little about who actually did so.
Two useful sources for beginning to trace distribution are Rowell's American Newspaper Directory (1869-1908) and the Ayer Directory of Publications (1880-present). Both of these sources are commonly available in research libraries, and partially available online through the Library of Congress. The University of North Texas Library also has a digitized collection of newspaper directories (1869-1922); this collection is keyword searchable, and also easier to navigate.
Who read the Farmer's Wife? The publisher pitched it as a hybrid of farm-newspaper and woman's-magazine,2 a publication that could provide advertisers with lucrative access to a demographic served separately by each: rural Americans, and women. The rural demographic was deemed valuable both for its size and its wealth.3 The publishers argued, furthermore, that this wealth could best be exploited through the women, not the men, because the "farm women pull the purse strings" in the family.4
According to the publisher, the typical Farmer's Wife reader was independent, accomplished, and assertive, a person with considerable business sense and a can-do attitude--quite different from the husband-dependent, demure, angel in the house of the Victorian imagination, or the pampered, functionless, urban housewife.5 The Farmer's Wife reader was someone who could and did act independently of her husband; she was the decision-maker and the money-spender for the household. The publisher repeatedly uses the "purse strings" as metonym for her power: contrary to expectations, the woman, not the man, controls them. It's not just that women spent the money, but that they personally determined how and where it would be spent.
It's difficult to assess the accuracy of these characterizations, and there's considerable evidence that they are simply false.6 The publisher seems to have anticipated this doubt: "Does it pay to advertise to her? Our advertising doubled in one year—it must pay".7 Not, perhaps, the strongest argument! It never-the-less seems significant that year after year the publisher continued to promote the idea of the magazine's readers as independent women with the discretionary power to spend, for even if these claims did not describe reality, the publisher would have an interest in working to make them do so. After all, if the farm woman couldn't actually spend her household income, then manufacturers would have no real incentive "to advertise to her." The magazine's very business model, then, made it desirable that their readers be like the women described above, and that those who weren't become so.8
For a review of scholarship on farm periodical readerships, see John J Fry, "'Who Read the Agricultural Journals?': Farm Newspaper Subscribers in the Lower Midwest." Chap. 4 in The Farm Press, Reform, and Rural Change, 1895-1920. New York: Routledge, 2005.
A good general introduction to and overview of the Farmer's Wife is Janet Galligani Casey's essay "'This is YOUR Magazine': Domesticity, Agrarianism, and The Farmer's Wife" in American Periodicals: A Journal of History, Criticism, and Bibliography. She discusses the publishing history of the magazine, and provides a close reading of its content.
Lauters, Mary Mattson. "More than a Farmer's Wife: Constructions of American Farm Women in Selected Media, 1910-1960." PhD diss., Universtiy of Minnesota, 2005. Lauters studies the portrayal of farm women in six popular periodicals, Farmer's Wife, Farm Journal (with which Farmer's Wife was eventually merged), Country Gentleman, Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, and Saturday Evening Post.
