The Impact Of The Industrial R Essay
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The Impact of the Industrial Revolution on Labor
--The Industrial Revolution that occurred in the years after the Civil
War had consequences for almost all aspects of society. Discuss the
consequences for farmers.
The Industrial Revolution following the Civil War had a tremendous
impact on farmers. Many events came together to make agriculture both
boom and bust. Cattle ranchers began to see huge profits, small farms
joined together, people moved out west, and farmers began to influence
politics.
At the end of the Civil War, the large state of Texas was home to
several million long-horned cattle. Because the animals were scrawny
compared to modern times, and because the farmers had no way of getting
their cattle to the eastern market, the cows were mostly raised for
their hide. However, ranchers would soon be able to get their product
to the market.
The farmers troubles were solved when the transcontinental railroad
linked the nation. Cattle could now be transported by train to large
stockyards were they would be processed. Beef barons like the swifts
and the Armours led the way for the new industry. Beef soon became a
major part of our nation s economy. The major cities of Chicago and
Kansas City were Meccas for the ranchers. From cities like these, the
freshly butchered meat could be shipped in the newly perfected
refrigerator cars all the way to the eastern market.
The cattle were delivered to the slaughterhouses by the long drive .
Texas cowboys-black, white, and Mexican- drove tens of thousands of cows
to their final destination. On their way to the towns, the animals would
graze on the open range eating government grass. Some of the favorite
terminal points were towns like Dodge City, Abilene, Ogallala, and
Cheyenne. These new towns were all controlled by marshals like
Abilene s James B. Wild Bill Hickcock.
The Long Drive proved profitable as long as the cattle could find grass
to eat, and the cowboys avoided the Indians, stampedes, cattle fever,
and other hazards. From 1866 to 1888, over 4 million steers were driven
from Texas to the northern processing towns.
The railroad made the Long Drive possible, but it almost made it
impossible as well. The same trains that brought meat into the eastern
markets also brought settlers to the western plains. The new settlers
began to grow crops and some began to raise sheep. These new farmers
enclosed their land with Glidden s barbwire. The thousands of miles of
barbwire separated the formerly open plains into small sections that
were not conducive to the Long Drive. The terrible winter of 1886-1887
also left thousands of cattle frozen and starved. Over expansion and
over grazing likewise took their toll.
The only way for the ranchers to avoid collapse was to make cattle
raising a big business and avoid over production. Breeders learned to
fence their property, store food for winter, import blooded bulls, and
produce fewer but meatier animals. The ranchers also learned to
organize. The Wyoming Stock-Growers Association virtually controlled
the state and its legislature.
The Homestead Act of 1862 brought a new dawn for western farmers. The
law provided that a settler could acquire as much as 160 acres of land
by living on it for five years, improving it, and paying a small fee of
about $30.00. As an alternative, land could also be purchased after
only six months residence at $1.25 per acre. Lands purchased by either
way were exempt from attachment for debt.
Before the Homestead Act, public land had been sold primarily for
revenue; now it was to be given away in order to encourage settlement
and a stimulus to the family farm- the backbone of democracy. The new
law was a godsend to farmers who could not afford to buy land at the
normal price. During the forty years following its passage, about half
a million families took advantage of the new act. Yet five times that
many families purchased their land from the railroads, the land
companies, or the states.
The Homestead Act was not as perfect as it seemed. The standard 160
acres would be quite nice in the damp Mississippi basin, but it was
pitifully inadequate on the parched plains. Thousands of Homesteaders
were forced to give up on their land because of the difficulty.
The Homestead Act and other similar laws simply invited fraud. Perhaps
ten times more of the public domain was bought by land grabbing
promoters than real farmers. Corporations would often use dummy
homesteaders to purchase choice pieces land. Settlers would later swear
that they had improved the land by erecting a twelve by fourteen house
that was really twelve by fourteen inches. Federal officials were only
partly successful in their attempts to control the land. So functioned
the government s first big giveaway program.
The railways also played a major role in the development of the West,
largely through the profitable marketing of crops. Some railroad
companies also ran huge businesses that encouraged foreigners to come to
America and live in the West. Northern Pacific Railroad was a leader in
this game of induced colonization.
The original explorers of the West believed that the land was sterile
because of the small amount of rainwater and the utter lack of anything
resembling a forest. But once the prairie sod had been broken by steel
plows, the earth proved to be astonishingly fruitful. Sodbusters
flocked onto the open plain and lacking trees for timber, they built
homes out of the sod they walked on and burned corncobs for warmth.
As a result of crop failures around the world, settlers in the 1870s
pushed farther west, onto the poor, marginal lands beyond the 100th
meridian. That imaginary lining running from the Dakotas to Texas,
separated to regions of different climates. The area to the east was
fertile and well watered. The area to the west was a semiarid land.
John Wesley Powell warned in 1874 that beyond the 100th meridian so
little rainwater fell that the land could not be farmed without massive
irrigation.
Ignoring Powell s advice, farmers irrationally chewed up the dirt of
western Kansas, eastern Colorado, and Montana. These farmers...
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