Well hey there and welcome back to Heimler's History, and further, welcome to the first review video of Unit 6 of the AP U.S. History Curriculum. This unit covers the time period 1865 to 1898, and we're going to start with the economics of westward expansion during this period. So if you're ready to get them Unit 6 brain cows milked, let's get to it.
So we're basically aiming at one thing in this video, and it is as follows. explain the causes and effects of the settlement of the West from 1877 to 1898. In the last unit, it seemed like all we talked about was the North and the South, but now let us turn our eyes westward and see what's happening with our brethren and sistren on the frontier. So during this period and a little bit before it, a massive change was taking place in the agricultural West, namely the mechanization of agriculture, which is to say farming was becoming more a task done with machines. than with the human body. Machines like the mechanical reaper and the combine harvester quickly replaced human sweat and animal muscle as the primary means of planting and harvesting crops.
And this had two significant effects. First it meant that farmers could plant and harvest a buttload more crops than they previously could. For example, the production of corn and wheat roughly doubled between 1870 and 1900. The second effect was the increasing obsolescence of small farmers.
Because small farmers couldn't compete in the market with these giant industrial farmers, primarily because they couldn't afford these pretty new machines, their farms folded one after another, in many cases being bought out by the bigger farmers. Now, with this surging glut of crops in the market, the law of supply and demand tells us that prices will decrease, and wouldn't you know it, that's exactly what happened. Prices per bushel of corn or wheat or whatever steeply declined, further putting pressure on small farmers who couldn't live by selling their crops at such low prices. So all this to say that during this period, farming in America underwent a drastic change to the detriment of small farmers and to the benefit of large-scale mechanized farmers. Even so, all farmers were feeling some economic pressure.
pain during this period. Industrial trusts, on which more in another video, made sure that prices remained high on manufactured goods. And why does that matter? Well, because farmers spent all their time farming and therefore relied on buying those manufactured goods like clothing and furniture in order to survive. But with those prices so high, the farmers were having trouble paying for them.
And then add to their agrimisery, farmers were having railroad problems. Relate. Farmers largely relied on railroads and trains to ship their crops to market for sale, but in many cases the railroad owners were charging unnaturally high prices for this service.
So all this to say, farmers in general had it rough during this period, and that's how you get an organized movement for farmer resistance to all these changes, namely the National Grange Movement. It was organized in 1868 as a collective aimed at bringing isolated farmers together for socialization and education. But as with everything in America, the Grange got political quick, fast, and in a hurry. As a collective body, the Grange Movement pushed many Midwestern states to pass laws regulating railroad rates for carrying freight and made abusive corporate practices that were hurting farmers illegal.
Taken together, these laws became known as the Granger Laws, and most significant among these laws was the Commerce Act of 1886, which required railroad rates to be reasonable and just and established a federal agency to enforce said reasonableness and justice, namely the Interstate Commerce Commission. Now, since we're talking so much about railroads, let's take a moment and try to understand where all these railroads were coming from. As you probably have learned by now, the federal government was positively giddy about getting people to move west and settle the frontier.
But moving west the old fashioned way, which is to say Oregon Trail style, wasn't the easiest thing to do. do. But with this new expanding technology of railroads, the federal government could see that this method of transportation could facilitate mass migration of Americans for settlement in the western lands.
And so two sets of laws combined to make westward migration a reality. First were the Pacific Railroads Acts, in which the federal government granted huge swaths of land to railroad companies who would then build a transcontinental railroad. And in 1869, in Promontory Summit, Utah, a golden spike was driven into the meeting of two rails that stretched from the east coast to the west coast.
And over the next few days, the train was able to go to the east coast. And over the next few days, the train was able to go to the west coast. decades, four more transcontinental railroads were completed, almost all with the help of government land grants, and this created the occasion for easier migration westward. Now the second law that aided those migrating west was the Homestead Act of 1862, which was expanded upon in other legislation, but for our purposes you just need to know that this law granted potential migrants 160 acres of free land out west on the condition that they would farm it and settle it.
Now that might sound like a great deal to you, but here's where I tell you not so much. And partly this was because of the mechanization of agriculture that I mentioned before. Like these small farms were eventually gobbled up by the larger ones, but mainly it was because 160 acres in the Midwest was not nearly enough land for a farmer to make a living. So many of these farmers ended up going Now the last cause I need to mention with respect to westward migration has to do with the discovery and extraction of precious metals like gold and silver. Now people began moving west to seek gold as far back as 1848 when the California Gold Rush occurred, but this continued for the next four decades.
In 1869, for example, gold was discovered in this fair mountain called Pike's Peak, and that led to an influx of over 100,000 folks into the surrounding regions in Kansas and Nebraska. And this occurred in several other places in the west as well, and when it did, boom towns sprang up seemingly overnight. For example, in the Pikes Peak region, the boom towns of Denver City and Boulder City sprang up as a result of this new wave of migrants looking to strike it rich.
Interestingly, because the desire for gold is no respecter of race or ethnicity, these boom towns ended up being extremely diverse, like on par with the major urban areas in the East. Okay, that's what you need to know about Unit 6, Topic- 2 of the AP US History Curriculum. Now you can click right here and grab my AP review packet if you want more help getting an A in your class and a 5 on your exam in May.
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