{"id":64,"date":"2015-08-21T18:07:02","date_gmt":"2015-08-21T18:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.candelalearning.com\/ushistory2os2xmaster\/?post_type=chapter&#038;p=64"},"modified":"2022-08-25T18:34:08","modified_gmt":"2022-08-25T18:34:08","slug":"homesteading-dreams-and-realities","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/chapter\/homesteading-dreams-and-realities\/","title":{"raw":"Homesteading: Dreams and Realities","rendered":"Homesteading: Dreams and Realities"},"content":{"raw":"<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-highlight\">\r\n<h3>Learning Objectives<\/h3>\r\n<ul class=\"im_orderedlist\">\r\n \t<li>Identify the challenges that farmers and pioneers faced as they settled west of the Mississippi River<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp23998736\">As settlers and homesteaders moved westward to improve the land given to them through the Homestead Act, they faced difficult and often insurmountable challenges. The land was difficult to farm, there were few building materials, and harsh weather, insects, and inexperience led to frequent setbacks. The prohibitive prices charged by the first railroad lines made it expensive to ship crops to market or have goods sent out. Although many farms failed, some survived and grew into large \u201cbonanza\u201d farms that hired additional labor and were able to benefit enough from economies of scale to become profitable. Still, small family farms, and the settlers who worked them, were hard-pressed to do more than scrape out a living in an unforgiving environment that was comprised of arid land, violent weather shifts, and other challenges.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<figure id=\"CNX_History_17_02_MapsMigrat\">\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"585\"]<img src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/884\/2015\/08\/23202806\/CNX_History_17_02_MapsMigrat.jpg\" alt=\"A map shows the trails used in westward migration and the railroad lines constructed after the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. The trails labeled include the Oregon Trail, California Trail, Spanish Trail, Desert Trail, Red River Trail, South Texas Trail, California\/Oregon Trail, Santa Fe Trail, and Ft. Smith Trail. The railroad lines labeled include the Great Northern, Northern Pacific, Southern Pacific, Central Pacific, Atlantic &amp; Pacific, Atchison, Topeka &amp; Santa Fe, and Texas &amp; Pacific.\" width=\"585\" height=\"480\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/> <strong>Figure 1<\/strong>. This map shows the trails (orange) used in westward migration and the development of railroad lines (blue) constructed after the completion of the first transcontinental railroad.[\/caption]<\/figure>\r\n<section id=\"fs-idm45418016\" data-depth=\"1\">\r\n<h2 data-type=\"title\">The Difficult Life of the Pioneer Farmer<\/h2>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm25129696\">Of the hundreds of thousands of settlers who moved west, the vast majority were homesteaders. These pioneers, like the Ingalls family of <em data-effect=\"italics\">Little House on the Prairie<\/em> book and television fame (see inset below), were seeking land and opportunity. Popularly known as \u201csodbusters,\u201d these men and women in the Midwest faced a difficult life on the frontier. They settled throughout the land that now makes up the Midwestern states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. The weather and environment were bleak, and settlers struggled to eke out a living. A few unseasonably rainy years had led would-be settlers to believe that the \u201cgreat desert\u201d was no more, but the region\u2019s typically low rainfall and harsh temperatures made crop cultivation hard.<\/p>\r\nIrrigation was a requirement, but finding water and building adequate systems proved too difficult and expensive for many farmers. It was not until 1902 and the passage of the Newlands Reclamation Act that a system finally existed to set aside funds from the sale of public lands to build dams for subsequent irrigation efforts. Prior to that, farmers across the Great Plains relied primarily on dry-farming techniques to grow corn, wheat, and sorghum, a practice that many continued in later years. Dry farming (or dryland farming) relies solely on rainfall and uses land husbandry techniques to take advantage of moisture trapped in the soil. A few farmers also began to employ windmill technology to draw water, although both the drilling and construction of windmills became an added expense that few farmers could afford.\r\n<div class=\"textbox examples\">\r\n<h3>Watch It<\/h3>\r\nThis video explains the massive growth in farming in the west because of the Homestead Act as well as some of the ensuing difficulties for these pioneer farmers.\r\n\r\n<center><iframe src=\"\/\/plugin.3playmedia.com\/show?mf=8159744&amp;p3sdk_version=1.10.1&amp;p=20361&amp;pt=375&amp;video_id=togDUjZ0Utc&amp;video_target=tpm-plugin-020iqw24-togDUjZ0Utc\" width=\"800px\" height=\"450px\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0px\" marginheight=\"0px\"><\/iframe><\/center><center>You can view the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/course-building.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/US+history+II\/The+Homestead+Act+and+Hard+Times+for+Farmers.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">transcript for \u201cThe Homestead Act and Hard Times for Farmers\u201d here (opens in new window)<\/a>.<\/center><\/div>\r\n<div id=\"fs-idp153163632\" class=\"history americana\" data-type=\"note\" data-label=\"Americana\">\r\n<div class=\"textbox key-takeaways\">\r\n<h3>The Enduring Appeal of <em data-effect=\"italics\">Little House on the Prairie<\/em><\/h3>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm43853776\">The story of western migration and survival has remained a touchstone of American culture, even today. Consider the enormous popularity of the <em data-effect=\"italics\">Little House<\/em> series. The books, originally published in the 1930s and 1940s, have been in print continuously. The television show, <em data-effect=\"italics\">Little House on the Prairie<\/em>, ran for over a decade and was hugely successful (and was said to be President Ronald Reagan\u2019s favorite show). The books, although fictional, were based on Laura Ingalls Wilder\u2019s own childhood, as she traveled west with her family via covered wagon, stopping in Kansas, Wisconsin, South Dakota, and beyond.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<figure id=\"CNX_History_17_02_LittleHous\">\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"585\"]<img src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/884\/2015\/08\/23202807\/CNX_History_17_02_LittleHous.jpg\" alt=\"Image (a) is a photograph of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Image (b) shows the cover of Ingalls Wilder\u2019s book, Little House on the Prairie. On the cover is a drawing of two young girls, who stand before a small cabin with the sun setting behind it.\" width=\"585\" height=\"379\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/> <strong>Figure 2<\/strong>. Laura Ingalls Wilder (a) is the celebrated author of the Little House series, which began in 1932 with the publication of Little House in the Big Woods. The third, and best-known, book in the series, Little House on the Prairie (b), was published just three years later.[\/caption]<\/figure>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm32947808\">Wilder wrote of her stories, \u201cAs you read my stories of long ago I hope you will remember that the things that are truly worthwhile and that will give you happiness are the same now as they were then. Courage and kindness, loyalty, truth, and helpfulness are always the same and always needed.\u201d While Ingalls makes the point that her stories underscore traditional values that remain the same over time, this is not necessarily the only thing that made these books so popular. Perhaps part of their appeal is that they are adventure stories, with wild weather, wild animals, and wild Indians all playing a role. Does this explain their ongoing popularity? What other factors might make these stories appealing so long after they were originally written?<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm32947808\"><span style=\"font-size: 1rem; text-align: initial;\">The first houses built by western settlers were typically made of mud and sod with thatch roofs, as there was little timber for building. Rain, when it arrived, presented constant problems for these <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 1rem; text-align: initial;\" data-type=\"term\">sod houses<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 1rem; text-align: initial;\">, with mud falling into food, and vermin, most notably lice, scampering across the bedding. Weather patterns not only left the fields dry, but they also brought tornadoes, droughts, blizzards, and insect swarms. Tales of swarms of locusts were commonplace, and the crop-eating insects would at times cover the ground six to twelve inches deep. One frequently quoted Kansas newspaper reported a locust swarm in 1878 during which the insects devoured \u201ceverything green, stripping the foliage off the bark and from the tender twigs of the fruit trees, destroying every plant that is good for food or pleasant to the eye, that man has planted.\u201d (Locust swarms still happen in our modern era, with devastating swarms destroying crops in eastern Africa as recently as 2020.)<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<figure id=\"CNX_History_17_02_Homestead\">\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"390\"]<img src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/884\/2015\/08\/23202809\/CNX_History_17_02_Homestead.jpg\" alt=\"A photograph shows a sod house with a wagon in front of it.\" width=\"390\" height=\"269\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/> <strong>Figure 3<\/strong>. Sod houses were common in the Midwest as settlers moved west. There was no lumber to gather and no stones with which to build. These mud homes were vulnerable to weather and vermin, making life incredibly hard for the newly arrived homesteaders.[\/caption]<\/figure>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp15051824\">Farmers also faced the ever-present threat of debt and farm foreclosure by the banks. While land was essentially free under the Homestead Act, all other farm necessities cost money and were initially difficult to obtain in the newly settled parts of the country where market economies did not yet fully reach. Horses, livestock, wagons, wells, fencing, seed, and fertilizer were all critical to survival, but often hard to come by as the population initially remained sparsely settled across vast tracts of land. Railroads charged notoriously high rates for farm equipment and livestock, making it difficult to procure goods or make a profit on anything sent back east. Banks also charged high interest rates, and, in a cycle that replayed itself year after year, farmers would borrow from the bank with the intention of repaying their debt after the harvest. As the number of farmers moving westward increased, the market price of their produce steadily declined, even as the value of the actual land increased. Each year, hard-working farmers produced ever-larger crops, flooding the markets and subsequently driving prices down even further. Although some understood the economics of supply and demand, none could overtly control such forces.<\/p>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm12240784\">Eventually, the arrival of a more extensive railroad network aided farmers, mostly by bringing much-needed supplies such as lumber for construction and new farm machinery. While John Deere sold a steel-faced plow as early as 1838, it was James Oliver\u2019s improvements to the device in the late 1860s that transformed life for homesteaders. His new, less expensive \u201cchilled plow\u201d was better equipped to cut through the shallow grass roots of the Midwestern terrain, as well as withstand damage from rocks just below the surface. Similar advancements in hay mowers, manure spreaders, and threshing machines greatly improved farm production for those who could afford them.<\/p>\r\nWhere capital expense became a significant factor, larger commercial farms\u2014known as \u201c<strong>bonanza farms<\/strong>\u201d\u2014began to develop. Farmers in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota hired migrant farmers to grow wheat on farms in excess of twenty thousand acres each. These large farms were succeeding by the end of the century, but small family farms continued to suffer. Although the land was nearly free, it cost close to $1000 for the necessary supplies to start up a farm, and many would-be landowners lured westward by the promise of cheap land became migrant farmers instead, working other peoples\u2019 land for a wage. The frustration of small farmers grew, ultimately leading to a revolt of sorts, discussed in a later module.\r\n\r\n<\/section><section id=\"fs-idm100764576\" data-depth=\"1\">\r\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\r\n<h3>Try It<\/h3>\r\nhttps:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/9d7f7829-e508-4c73-9af5-86098e8d36b3\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<h2 data-type=\"title\">An Even More Challenging Life: A Pioneer Wife<\/h2>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm4117056\">Although the West was numerically a male-dominated society, homesteading in particular encouraged the presence of women, families, and a domestic lifestyle, even if such a life was not an easy one. Women faced all the physical hardships that men encountered in terms of weather, illness, and danger, with the added complication of childbirth. Often, there was no doctor or midwife providing assistance, and many women died from treatable complications, as did their newborns. While some women could find employment in the newly settled towns as teachers, cooks, or seamstresses, they originally did not enjoy many rights. They could not sell property, sue for divorce, serve on juries, or vote. And for the vast majority of women, their work was not in towns for money, but on the farm. As late as 1900, a typical farm wife could expect to devote nine hours per day to chores such as cleaning, sewing, laundering, and preparing food. Two additional hours per day were spent cleaning the barn and chicken coop, milking the cows, caring for the chickens, and tending the family garden. One wife commented in 1879, \u201cIt is a weary, monotonous round of cooking and washing and mending and as a result, the insane asylum is a third filled with wives of farmers.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm10195008\">Despite this grim image, the challenges of farm life eventually empowered women to break through some legal and social barriers. Many lived more equitably as partners with their husbands than did their eastern counterparts, helping each other through both hard times and good. If widowed, a wife typically took over responsibility for the farm, a level of management that was very rare back east, where the farm would fall to a son or other male relation. Pioneer women made important decisions and were considered by their husbands to be more equal partners in the success of the homestead, due to the necessity that all members had to work hard and contribute to the farming enterprise for it to succeed. Therefore, it is not surprising that the first states to grant women\u2019s rights, including the right to vote, were those in the Pacific Northwest and Upper Midwest, where women pioneers worked the land side by side with men.<\/p>\r\nSome women seemed to be well suited to the challenges that frontier life presented them. Writing to her Aunt Martha from their homestead in Minnesota in 1873, Mary Carpenter refused to complain about the hardships of farm life: \u201cI try to trust in God\u2019s promises, but we can\u2019t expect him to work miracles nowadays. Nevertheless, all that is expected of us is to do the best we can, and that we shall certainly endeavor to do. Even if we do freeze and starve in the way of duty, it will not be a dishonorable death.\u201d\r\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\r\n<h3>Try It<\/h3>\r\nhttps:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/985202e7-6ec7-4c28-99b0-c7434395c503\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/section>\r\n<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\r\n<h3>Glossary<\/h3>\r\n<strong>bonanza farms:\u00a0<\/strong>large farms owned by speculators who hired laborers to work the land; these large farms allowed their owners to benefit from economies of scale and prosper, but they did nothing to help small family farms, which continued to struggle\r\n\r\n<strong>sod house:\u00a0<\/strong>a frontier home constructed of dirt held together by thick-rooted prairie grass that was prevalent in the Midwest; sod, cut into large rectangles, was stacked to make the walls of the structure, providing an inexpensive, yet damp, house for western settlers\r\n\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-highlight\">\n<h3>Learning Objectives<\/h3>\n<ul class=\"im_orderedlist\">\n<li>Identify the challenges that farmers and pioneers faced as they settled west of the Mississippi River<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p id=\"fs-idp23998736\">As settlers and homesteaders moved westward to improve the land given to them through the Homestead Act, they faced difficult and often insurmountable challenges. The land was difficult to farm, there were few building materials, and harsh weather, insects, and inexperience led to frequent setbacks. The prohibitive prices charged by the first railroad lines made it expensive to ship crops to market or have goods sent out. Although many farms failed, some survived and grew into large \u201cbonanza\u201d farms that hired additional labor and were able to benefit enough from economies of scale to become profitable. Still, small family farms, and the settlers who worked them, were hard-pressed to do more than scrape out a living in an unforgiving environment that was comprised of arid land, violent weather shifts, and other challenges.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"CNX_History_17_02_MapsMigrat\">\n<div style=\"width: 595px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/884\/2015\/08\/23202806\/CNX_History_17_02_MapsMigrat.jpg\" alt=\"A map shows the trails used in westward migration and the railroad lines constructed after the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. The trails labeled include the Oregon Trail, California Trail, Spanish Trail, Desert Trail, Red River Trail, South Texas Trail, California\/Oregon Trail, Santa Fe Trail, and Ft. Smith Trail. The railroad lines labeled include the Great Northern, Northern Pacific, Southern Pacific, Central Pacific, Atlantic &amp; Pacific, Atchison, Topeka &amp; Santa Fe, and Texas &amp; Pacific.\" width=\"585\" height=\"480\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Figure 1<\/strong>. This map shows the trails (orange) used in westward migration and the development of railroad lines (blue) constructed after the completion of the first transcontinental railroad.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<section id=\"fs-idm45418016\" data-depth=\"1\">\n<h2 data-type=\"title\">The Difficult Life of the Pioneer Farmer<\/h2>\n<p id=\"fs-idm25129696\">Of the hundreds of thousands of settlers who moved west, the vast majority were homesteaders. These pioneers, like the Ingalls family of <em data-effect=\"italics\">Little House on the Prairie<\/em> book and television fame (see inset below), were seeking land and opportunity. Popularly known as \u201csodbusters,\u201d these men and women in the Midwest faced a difficult life on the frontier. They settled throughout the land that now makes up the Midwestern states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. The weather and environment were bleak, and settlers struggled to eke out a living. A few unseasonably rainy years had led would-be settlers to believe that the \u201cgreat desert\u201d was no more, but the region\u2019s typically low rainfall and harsh temperatures made crop cultivation hard.<\/p>\n<p>Irrigation was a requirement, but finding water and building adequate systems proved too difficult and expensive for many farmers. It was not until 1902 and the passage of the Newlands Reclamation Act that a system finally existed to set aside funds from the sale of public lands to build dams for subsequent irrigation efforts. Prior to that, farmers across the Great Plains relied primarily on dry-farming techniques to grow corn, wheat, and sorghum, a practice that many continued in later years. Dry farming (or dryland farming) relies solely on rainfall and uses land husbandry techniques to take advantage of moisture trapped in the soil. A few farmers also began to employ windmill technology to draw water, although both the drilling and construction of windmills became an added expense that few farmers could afford.<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox examples\">\n<h3>Watch It<\/h3>\n<p>This video explains the massive growth in farming in the west because of the Homestead Act as well as some of the ensuing difficulties for these pioneer farmers.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/plugin.3playmedia.com\/show?mf=8159744&amp;p3sdk_version=1.10.1&amp;p=20361&amp;pt=375&amp;video_id=togDUjZ0Utc&amp;video_target=tpm-plugin-020iqw24-togDUjZ0Utc\" width=\"800px\" height=\"450px\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0px\" marginheight=\"0px\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\">You can view the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/course-building.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/US+history+II\/The+Homestead+Act+and+Hard+Times+for+Farmers.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">transcript for \u201cThe Homestead Act and Hard Times for Farmers\u201d here (opens in new window)<\/a>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"fs-idp153163632\" class=\"history americana\" data-type=\"note\" data-label=\"Americana\">\n<div class=\"textbox key-takeaways\">\n<h3>The Enduring Appeal of <em data-effect=\"italics\">Little House on the Prairie<\/em><\/h3>\n<p id=\"fs-idm43853776\">The story of western migration and survival has remained a touchstone of American culture, even today. Consider the enormous popularity of the <em data-effect=\"italics\">Little House<\/em> series. The books, originally published in the 1930s and 1940s, have been in print continuously. The television show, <em data-effect=\"italics\">Little House on the Prairie<\/em>, ran for over a decade and was hugely successful (and was said to be President Ronald Reagan\u2019s favorite show). The books, although fictional, were based on Laura Ingalls Wilder\u2019s own childhood, as she traveled west with her family via covered wagon, stopping in Kansas, Wisconsin, South Dakota, and beyond.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"CNX_History_17_02_LittleHous\">\n<div style=\"width: 595px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/884\/2015\/08\/23202807\/CNX_History_17_02_LittleHous.jpg\" alt=\"Image (a) is a photograph of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Image (b) shows the cover of Ingalls Wilder\u2019s book, Little House on the Prairie. On the cover is a drawing of two young girls, who stand before a small cabin with the sun setting behind it.\" width=\"585\" height=\"379\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Figure 2<\/strong>. Laura Ingalls Wilder (a) is the celebrated author of the Little House series, which began in 1932 with the publication of Little House in the Big Woods. The third, and best-known, book in the series, Little House on the Prairie (b), was published just three years later.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p id=\"fs-idm32947808\">Wilder wrote of her stories, \u201cAs you read my stories of long ago I hope you will remember that the things that are truly worthwhile and that will give you happiness are the same now as they were then. Courage and kindness, loyalty, truth, and helpfulness are always the same and always needed.\u201d While Ingalls makes the point that her stories underscore traditional values that remain the same over time, this is not necessarily the only thing that made these books so popular. Perhaps part of their appeal is that they are adventure stories, with wild weather, wild animals, and wild Indians all playing a role. Does this explain their ongoing popularity? What other factors might make these stories appealing so long after they were originally written?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p id=\"fs-idm32947808\"><span style=\"font-size: 1rem; text-align: initial;\">The first houses built by western settlers were typically made of mud and sod with thatch roofs, as there was little timber for building. Rain, when it arrived, presented constant problems for these <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 1rem; text-align: initial;\" data-type=\"term\">sod houses<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 1rem; text-align: initial;\">, with mud falling into food, and vermin, most notably lice, scampering across the bedding. Weather patterns not only left the fields dry, but they also brought tornadoes, droughts, blizzards, and insect swarms. Tales of swarms of locusts were commonplace, and the crop-eating insects would at times cover the ground six to twelve inches deep. One frequently quoted Kansas newspaper reported a locust swarm in 1878 during which the insects devoured \u201ceverything green, stripping the foliage off the bark and from the tender twigs of the fruit trees, destroying every plant that is good for food or pleasant to the eye, that man has planted.\u201d (Locust swarms still happen in our modern era, with devastating swarms destroying crops in eastern Africa as recently as 2020.)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<figure id=\"CNX_History_17_02_Homestead\">\n<div style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/884\/2015\/08\/23202809\/CNX_History_17_02_Homestead.jpg\" alt=\"A photograph shows a sod house with a wagon in front of it.\" width=\"390\" height=\"269\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Figure 3<\/strong>. Sod houses were common in the Midwest as settlers moved west. There was no lumber to gather and no stones with which to build. These mud homes were vulnerable to weather and vermin, making life incredibly hard for the newly arrived homesteaders.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p id=\"fs-idp15051824\">Farmers also faced the ever-present threat of debt and farm foreclosure by the banks. While land was essentially free under the Homestead Act, all other farm necessities cost money and were initially difficult to obtain in the newly settled parts of the country where market economies did not yet fully reach. Horses, livestock, wagons, wells, fencing, seed, and fertilizer were all critical to survival, but often hard to come by as the population initially remained sparsely settled across vast tracts of land. Railroads charged notoriously high rates for farm equipment and livestock, making it difficult to procure goods or make a profit on anything sent back east. Banks also charged high interest rates, and, in a cycle that replayed itself year after year, farmers would borrow from the bank with the intention of repaying their debt after the harvest. As the number of farmers moving westward increased, the market price of their produce steadily declined, even as the value of the actual land increased. Each year, hard-working farmers produced ever-larger crops, flooding the markets and subsequently driving prices down even further. Although some understood the economics of supply and demand, none could overtly control such forces.<\/p>\n<p id=\"fs-idm12240784\">Eventually, the arrival of a more extensive railroad network aided farmers, mostly by bringing much-needed supplies such as lumber for construction and new farm machinery. While John Deere sold a steel-faced plow as early as 1838, it was James Oliver\u2019s improvements to the device in the late 1860s that transformed life for homesteaders. His new, less expensive \u201cchilled plow\u201d was better equipped to cut through the shallow grass roots of the Midwestern terrain, as well as withstand damage from rocks just below the surface. Similar advancements in hay mowers, manure spreaders, and threshing machines greatly improved farm production for those who could afford them.<\/p>\n<p>Where capital expense became a significant factor, larger commercial farms\u2014known as \u201c<strong>bonanza farms<\/strong>\u201d\u2014began to develop. Farmers in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota hired migrant farmers to grow wheat on farms in excess of twenty thousand acres each. These large farms were succeeding by the end of the century, but small family farms continued to suffer. Although the land was nearly free, it cost close to $1000 for the necessary supplies to start up a farm, and many would-be landowners lured westward by the promise of cheap land became migrant farmers instead, working other peoples\u2019 land for a wage. The frustration of small farmers grew, ultimately leading to a revolt of sorts, discussed in a later module.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"fs-idm100764576\" data-depth=\"1\">\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\n<h3>Try It<\/h3>\n<p>\t<iframe id=\"assessment_practice_9d7f7829-e508-4c73-9af5-86098e8d36b3\" class=\"resizable\" src=\"https:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/9d7f7829-e508-4c73-9af5-86098e8d36b3?iframe_resize_id=assessment_practice_id_9d7f7829-e508-4c73-9af5-86098e8d36b3\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none;width:100%;height:100%;min-height:300px;\"><br \/>\n\t<\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h2 data-type=\"title\">An Even More Challenging Life: A Pioneer Wife<\/h2>\n<p id=\"fs-idm4117056\">Although the West was numerically a male-dominated society, homesteading in particular encouraged the presence of women, families, and a domestic lifestyle, even if such a life was not an easy one. Women faced all the physical hardships that men encountered in terms of weather, illness, and danger, with the added complication of childbirth. Often, there was no doctor or midwife providing assistance, and many women died from treatable complications, as did their newborns. While some women could find employment in the newly settled towns as teachers, cooks, or seamstresses, they originally did not enjoy many rights. They could not sell property, sue for divorce, serve on juries, or vote. And for the vast majority of women, their work was not in towns for money, but on the farm. As late as 1900, a typical farm wife could expect to devote nine hours per day to chores such as cleaning, sewing, laundering, and preparing food. Two additional hours per day were spent cleaning the barn and chicken coop, milking the cows, caring for the chickens, and tending the family garden. One wife commented in 1879, \u201cIt is a weary, monotonous round of cooking and washing and mending and as a result, the insane asylum is a third filled with wives of farmers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p id=\"fs-idm10195008\">Despite this grim image, the challenges of farm life eventually empowered women to break through some legal and social barriers. Many lived more equitably as partners with their husbands than did their eastern counterparts, helping each other through both hard times and good. If widowed, a wife typically took over responsibility for the farm, a level of management that was very rare back east, where the farm would fall to a son or other male relation. Pioneer women made important decisions and were considered by their husbands to be more equal partners in the success of the homestead, due to the necessity that all members had to work hard and contribute to the farming enterprise for it to succeed. Therefore, it is not surprising that the first states to grant women\u2019s rights, including the right to vote, were those in the Pacific Northwest and Upper Midwest, where women pioneers worked the land side by side with men.<\/p>\n<p>Some women seemed to be well suited to the challenges that frontier life presented them. Writing to her Aunt Martha from their homestead in Minnesota in 1873, Mary Carpenter refused to complain about the hardships of farm life: \u201cI try to trust in God\u2019s promises, but we can\u2019t expect him to work miracles nowadays. Nevertheless, all that is expected of us is to do the best we can, and that we shall certainly endeavor to do. Even if we do freeze and starve in the way of duty, it will not be a dishonorable death.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\n<h3>Try It<\/h3>\n<p>\t<iframe id=\"assessment_practice_985202e7-6ec7-4c28-99b0-c7434395c503\" class=\"resizable\" src=\"https:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/985202e7-6ec7-4c28-99b0-c7434395c503?iframe_resize_id=assessment_practice_id_985202e7-6ec7-4c28-99b0-c7434395c503\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none;width:100%;height:100%;min-height:300px;\"><br \/>\n\t<\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\n<h3>Glossary<\/h3>\n<p><strong>bonanza farms:\u00a0<\/strong>large farms owned by speculators who hired laborers to work the land; these large farms allowed their owners to benefit from economies of scale and prosper, but they did nothing to help small family farms, which continued to struggle<\/p>\n<p><strong>sod house:\u00a0<\/strong>a frontier home constructed of dirt held together by thick-rooted prairie grass that was prevalent in the Midwest; sod, cut into large rectangles, was stacked to make the walls of the structure, providing an inexpensive, yet damp, house for western settlers<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t <section class=\"citations-section\" role=\"contentinfo\">\n\t\t\t <h3>Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t <div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <div id=\"citation-list-64\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <div class=\"licensing\"><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">CC licensed content, Original<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>Modification, adaptation, and original content. <strong>Authored by<\/strong>: Megan Coplen for Lumen Learning. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\">CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike<\/a><\/em><\/li><\/ul><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">CC licensed content, Shared previously<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>US History. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: OpenStax. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/openstaxcollege.org\/textbooks\/us-history\">http:\/\/openstaxcollege.org\/textbooks\/us-history<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/\">CC BY: Attribution<\/a><\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Access for free at https:\/\/openstax.org\/books\/us-history\/pages\/1-introduction<\/li><\/ul><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">All rights reserved content<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>The Homestead Act and Hard Times for Farmers. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: NBC News Learn. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=togDUjZ0Utc\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=togDUjZ0Utc<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em>Other<\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Standard YouTube License<\/li><\/ul><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t <\/section>","protected":false},"author":19,"menu_order":6,"template":"","meta":{"_candela_citation":"[{\"type\":\"cc\",\"description\":\"US History\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"OpenStax\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/openstaxcollege.org\/textbooks\/us-history\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"cc-by\",\"license_terms\":\"Access for free at https:\/\/openstax.org\/books\/us-history\/pages\/1-introduction\"},{\"type\":\"copyrighted_video\",\"description\":\"The Homestead Act and Hard Times for Farmers\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"NBC News Learn\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=togDUjZ0Utc\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"other\",\"license_terms\":\"Standard YouTube License\"},{\"type\":\"original\",\"description\":\"Modification, adaptation, and original content\",\"author\":\"Megan Coplen for Lumen Learning\",\"organization\":\"\",\"url\":\"\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"cc-by-sa\",\"license_terms\":\"\"}]","CANDELA_OUTCOMES_GUID":"7a9023bf-0f3a-488e-9954-c64656335818,b2e61598-04a3-4745-9535-3ddb0dfc0fab","pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-64","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":46,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9276,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/64\/revisions\/9276"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/46"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/64\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}