Day 105: The Great West and the Agricultural Revolution

Baltimore Polytechnic InstituteFebruary 14, 2012

A.P. U.S. HistoryMr. Green

Happy Valentine’s Day!!!!!!!

Objectives: Students will:Describe the nature of the cultural conflicts and battles that accompanied the white American migration into the Great Plains and the Far West.Explain the development of federal policy towards Native Americans in the late nineteenth century.Analyze the brief flowering and decline of the cattle and mining frontiers, and the settling of the arid West by small farmers increasingly engaged with a worldwide economy.

AP FocusFederal land grants entice whites to seek out new lives in the West, which brings them into conflict with the Indians, many of whom had earlier been pushed west by the U.S. government.

By the end of the century, the frontier is closed—all of the land in the continental United States is settled or can no longer be considered frontier, according to the Census Bureau.

The Great West and the Agricultural Revolution

CHAPTER THEMESAfter the Civil War, whites overcame the Plains

Indians’ fierce resistance and settled the Great West, bringing to a close the long frontier phase of American history.

The farmers who populated the West found themselves the victims of an economic revolution in agriculture. Trapped in a permanent debtor dependency, in the 1880s, they finally turned to political action to protest their condition. Their efforts culminated in the Populist Party’s attempt to create an interracial farmer/labor coalition in the 1890s, but William Jennings Bryan’s defeat in the pivotal election of 1896 signaled the triumph of urbanism and the middle class.

Chapter Focus

Focus Questions Chapter 26-Due Wednesday Decades Chart in class on Wednesday

Announcements

Homestead Act of 1862160 acres maxliving on that land for 5 yearsimproving that landnominal fee-$30

Marked a change in policyPublic land sold for revenueThis policy promoted rapid settlement

½ million families utilized this program Drought conditions were commonFraud was common with the Homestead ActRailroads sold land given to them by the governmentLand surprisingly fertile, once the sod was busted

The Farmers’ Frontier

Average Annual Precipitation, with Major Agricultural Products, 1900

Higher wheat prices enticed settlers100 meridian or bust

agriculture impossible without irrigationdry-farmingtough strains of wheat from Russiasorghumbarbed wire

Federally financed irrigation projectsDams a plenty-Missouri/Columbia/Colorado Rivers

Cont’d

New States 1876: Colorado1889-1890: North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming1896-Utah

Oklahoma SoonersApril 22, 1889-legal opening

The Far West Comes of Age

1890-Census closes the frontierParks

Yellowstone 1872Yosemite 1890Sequoia 1890

The closing caused new economic and psychological problems

Theory of the frontier as a safety valve not completely accurate

After 1880, area between the Rockies and the Pacific most urbanized region in America

The Fading Frontier

Farmers evolved from making everything to becoming producers and consumers

Focused on a single cash crop-wheat or cornFarmers became tied to the railroads, banking,

and manufacturingTwine binderCombine

Farmers blamed banks instead of themselvesMechanization of agricultureCalifornia’s Central ValleyBonanza wheat farms MN/ND

The Farm Becomes a Factory

Price of commodity determined by the world market and world output

Deflation caused farmers to pay more back to the bank

Not enough currency to go aroundLived in a vicious circle

farm machinery increased outputincreased output lowered the pricelower prices drove them into more debt

Deflation Dooms the Debtor

Grass-hopers and boll weevilOver-assessed land, high local taxesHigh protective tariffs helped manufacturingMiddlemen cutRailroad cutAll lead to a major political uprising

Unhappy Farmers

1. Why has the Plains Indians’ resistance to white encroachment played such a large part in the popular American view of the West? How is that mythical past related to the Indians’ actual history?

2. What was romantic about the final phases of frontier settlement, and what was not?

3. Why was the “passing of the frontier” in 1890 a disturbing development for many Americans? Was the frontier more important as a particular place or as an idea?

Discussion-Review

Begin Reading first ½ of Chapter 26

Homework