U.S. History Since Reconstruction ~ Week Two Lecture

Between 1870-1900: • Number of American farms doubled. > 1 million new farms.• Number of farm acres doubled.• Government policies encouraged expansion.

Factors of development:•Railroad (Pacific Railway Act)•Homestead Act•Removal of Plains Indian Tribes•Removal of Plains Buffalo

Pacific Railway Act

Millions of Millions of AcresAcres

Railroads received ~ 100 million

acres of Western land under

Pacific Railway Act, 1862-1872.

Railroads used land as collateral

to secure loans from Wall Street

banks in order to meet

construction costs.

Railroads might go bankrupt if

they could find enough settlers

to buy their land.

Railroad investors could lose

money if railroad construction

outstripped settlement.

Homestead Act of 1862

• 160 acres of public land free, provided settler live on land & “improve” it for 5 years• additional acres available for $1.25 per acre after 6 months’ residency• 605 million acres available• land given to male head-of-household or to single or widowed women• only 10% of western settler received land under the act (~400,000)• railroads, land companies & state governments usually held the best land, which had to be purchased

Where the Buffalo Roamed

Buffalo Hunt

Stinkers

Buffalo Hides

Buffalo Skulls

Geronimo

Reservation System

Dawes Severalty Act of 1887

• Seen as a humane alternative to reservation policy by sympathetic whites

• Goal was to “assimilate” Native Americans into white culture

• Native Americans to be turned into farmers

• Allowed president to break up the reservations by distributing land to individual Indians, then legally “severed” from their tribes

• 160 acres per male

• individuals could become U.S. citizens

• 60% of reservation lands lost

• 66% of allotted land lost eventually

Assimilation

.

Wounded Knee

Plow that Broke the PlainsPlow that Broke the Plains

Sod-busting

Home on the Range

Industrialized Farming

.

An Extractive Economy

.