FARMING THE GREAT PLAINS

In 1862 Union and Confederate armies were fighting some of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. But that same year Congress found time to pass a law that had nothing to do with the war. The law was called the Homestead Act.

The Homestead Act offered free farms ("homesteads") in the West to families of settlers. 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 for 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 helped them to start their farms and communities.

East of the Mississippi, small 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. Years later he remembered the first sight of the land that was to be his new home:

    "Each mile took us farther and farther 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 looked around us with awe."

Building a house was the first task the homesteaders faced. They had to do this themselves, for there was no one else to do it for them. But they had a problem. What could they use as building material? No trees grew on the plains, only mile after mile of long, waving grass.

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 - "sod busters."

These same tangled grass roots also gave homesteaders a lot of trouble. The Great Plains had never before been ploughed. The roots of its grasses formed a tangled mat at least four inches thick. When farmers tried to cut through this mat to sow their seeds it often broke or twisted the iron blades of their ploughs.

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 gallop.

In some years plagues of insects caused even more destruction than fire. Between 1874 and 1877 grasshoppers swarmed across the plains in millions, eating everything they found - crops, leather boots, clothing, wooden door frames. In one place they stopped a railroad engine by covering the track until the rails became too slippery for the engine to move.

Some homesteaders were discouraged by such problems. They gave up their land and moved back east. But 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 driven by the prairie winds raised life-giving water from hundreds of feet below the dry surface of the land. Barbed wire fenced stopped straying cattle from trampling crops into the ground.

None of these aids were made by the farmers themselves. They were manufactured in big new factories in cities like Chicago. From Chicago the railroads carried them out to the Plains. The railroads also carried away the farmers' crops. This made it possible for the farmers to sell their produce in far-away places. Before the end of the nineteenth century wheat grown on the Great Plains of North America was feeding millions of people, not only in the United States but thousands of miles away in Europe.

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 east 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 and planted more land. But if the rains failed, the sun burned up their crops and the prairie winds blew away their dusty top soil, leaving the land poorer and less productive. Even when enough rain fell for the crops to grow well, farmers could still be in trouble. In such years the land produced so much wheat that the prices for which individual farmers were able to sell it were too low to give them a decent living.

In the last thirty years of the nineteenth century such "over-production" 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.

Farmers formed political action groups to try to improve their position. The groups were particularly keen to force railroad companies to reduce the high prices that they charged to transport farmers' crops. They included the Patrons of Husbandry, which was formed in the 1870s, and the Populist Party of the 1890s. Members of the Patrons of Husbandry were also known as "Grangers." The voting power of the Grangers caused many western states to pass "Granger laws." These laws set up government bodies to control railroad freight charges and to look after farmers' interests in other matters.

Grangers also joined together in cooperative societies. Some of these cooperatives failed because the farmers who ran them lacked business experience. Others survive even today. 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.

Bryn O'Callaghan: An illustrated history of the USA; Longman, Harlow, 1990/1996, page 62 ff.