The Great Plains

The Homestead Act offered free farms in the West. Each homestead consisted of 160 acres of land and any head of a family who was at least twenty-one years of age and an American citizen could claim one. So could immigrants who intended to become citizens. All that homesteaders had to do was to move onto a piece of public land that is land owned by the government live on it for five years and the land became theirs. If a family wanted to own its homestead more quickly than this it could buy the land after only six months for a very low price of ₴ 1.25 an acre.  Transcontinental railroad companies like the Union Pacific also provided settlers with cheap land. These companies had been given land beside their tracks by the government. To increase their profits they were keen for people to begin farming this land so they advertised fur settlers. They did this not only in the eastern United States, but as far away as Europe. They shipped immigrants across the Atlantic, gave them free railroad transport to the West and often help ed them to start their farms and communities. East of the Mississippi, small family farms were the usual way of cultivating the land. From the 1870s onwards farms of this sort began to spread over the Great Plains. As a boy, Hamlin  Garland was taken to live on the Plains by his parents. " Each mile took us farther and fart her into the unsettled prairie until in the afternoon of the second day, we came to a meadow so wide that its western rim touched the sky ... The plain was covered with grass as tall as ripe wheat and when my father stopped his team [of horses, pulling the wagon] and came back to us and said, 'Well, children, here we are on The Big Prairie' we loo ked around us with awe. "The settlers built their houses from the matted roots of this grass. They cut thick pieces of earth and grass roots - "sods" ~ from the dry ground and used them as building bricks. This custom earned homesteaders a nickname by which they were often known as - " sod busters." Lack of water was another problem. The Great Plains had few streams and the rainfall was so low and unreliable that farmers often watched their crops shrivel up and die in the dry ground. Fire was another danger of the long, dry summers. A lightning flash or even a small spark, could start a fire that would race across the prairie faster than a horse could gallop. Some homesteaders wen: discouraged by such problems. They gave up their land and moved back cast. Hut most stayed. Gradually they began to overcome their early difficulties, Ploughs with steel blades enabled them to cut through the prairie sod and cultivate the soil beneath. Mechanical reapers made it possible to harvest wheat crops ten times faster than before. Pumps d riven by the prairie winds raised life - giving water from hundreds affect below the dry surface of the land. Barbed wire fences stopped straying cattle from trampling crops into the ground.

In 1874 an Illinois farmer named Joseph Glidden patented an invention. He advertised it as " stronger than whiskey and cheaper than air. " His invention provided prairie farmers with something that, in a land without trees. They desperately needed-a cheap and efficient fencing material. Glidden's invention was barbed wire. Barbed wire consists of two strands of plain wire twisted around one another, with short, sharp wife spikes held between the m. By 1890. 100 pounds of barbed wire was being sold for only $4. Prairie farmers bought tons of it to fence in their lands. Barbed wire fences meant that prairie farmers could plant crops knowing that straying cattle would not trample and eat the growing plants. They could breed better animals knowing that stray bull s could not mate with their cows. They could mark off their boundaries to avoid quarrels with neighbors. Glidden's invention changed the face of the Great Plains. By the end of the century thousands of miles of barbed wire fences had divided the open prairie into a patchwork of separate farms and fields. But prairie farmers still had problems. The Homestead Act gave them land but it failed to give them a sure living. On the well-watered lands cast of the Mississippi a farmer could easily support a family on a homestead of 160 acres. On the rain- starved Great Plains no farmer could make a living from a farm of that size. His crops of wheat were too small: his animals were too hungry. Prairie farmers worked hard to survive. They ploughed up an d planted more land. In the last thirty years of the nineteenth century such "overproduction" became a big problem for American farmers. Its cause was not only that farmers were cultivating more land. Improved agricultural machines were also making their farms more productive every year. "Gang" ploughs with several blades made it possible to prepare more land for sowing more quickly. Giant machines called "combine harvesters" cut and threshed wheat in one operation. Grangers also joined together in cooperative societies. Some of these  cooperatives tailed became the farmers who ran them lacked business experience. Others survive eve n to day. In many western farming communities cooperative organizations still compete with privately owned firms both to supply the farmer's needs and to buy his produce.

Bibliography:

1.     The Norton Anthology of American Literature.

2.     A History of American Literature, A. Grey

3.     An Outline of American History.

4.      An Illustrated History of the USA.