WEEK 11 – American Settlement and Frontier – Thoughts – Parr

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WEEK 11 – American Settlement and Frontier – Thoughts – Parr

The United States began a full industrial revolution after 1865, accompanied by an agricultural revolution whereby more food was produced by fewer people. An application of machinery: such as steam-powered harvesters, combines, twine binders, threshers, tractors, roller mills (producing flour), grain elevators; railroads in an increasingly settled West were instrumental in this dual economic growth.

Railroad growth was particularly impressive. By 1900 the United States had over 200,000 miles of track, more than all of the nations of Europe combined. Railroads as an industry required a huge initial capital outlay and a high cost of maintenance, along with the expenses associated with competition among a large number of railroad companies. Growth in this area of the economy was strongly aided by both state and federal subsidies in public lands, freely donated to the tune of 155, 504, 994 acres by the federal government, along with 49,000,000 acres by western states prior to 1900. This land provided right-of-ways, about a mile wide, for railroad tracks, with the excess land being sold by the railroad companies to private purchasers. In addition, the federal government supplied surveys by government engineers. Cheap labor was supplied by large numbers of European and Chinese immigrant labor, who earned very low wages while doing very dangerous work. A target amount of productivity was the laying of about ten miles of track per day. A pivotal accomplishment was the connection of a railroad line across the West in 1869, when the Union Pacific, moving westward from Omaha, met a line being built to the east from Sacramento, by the Central Pacific, in Ogden, Utah. This signified the connection of the country from East to West by railroad.

However, railroads had their elements of danger for passengers and surrounding communities. Shoddy workmanship from too rapid a pace of building in the form of wooden trestles, rails laid, etc., posed hazards. For example, something called “smoke heads,” iron straps on the rails could break loose and penetrate passenger coaches causing injury and death. Fires on wooden passenger coaches could be caused by stoves or by the sparks from steam engine emissions, igniting the cars, clothing or surrounding vegetation. Some byways were of one track requiring sidings where trains could pull over allowing another to pass in the opposite direction. Faulty signals, human error or complicated time tables, magnified the danger. Head-on collisions were anything but rare occurrences.

The invention of the Westinghouse airbrake in the 1870’s was helpful, as was the adoption of a standard gauge of rails in 1882. On November 18, 1883, the United States adopted nationally accepted four regional time zones (standard time) facilitating the use of timetables and schedules

The reputation of railroads, especially among the inhabitants of the West was anything but altruistic. It was suspected, with justification, that railroads charged larger shippers cheaper rates for long-distance freight than those for modest farmers and consumers. In addition, collusion by the heads of railroad giants, to fix rates in order to avoid costly “railroad wars” (the lowering of rates to outbid competitors for customers) was strongly suspected, with justification. One of the targets of mid-western and western populist movements was to have the state and/or federal government reign in, and regulate these corporate giants, often signified by “the octopus.” A popular novel by that name, by a Frank Norris, was a best seller, targeting the railroads as heartless monsters of greed and danger to the public. Farmers’ organizations such as the Grange worked for the relief of farmers by rousing public opinion and by lawsuits in the courts.

However, it must be said that the United States enjoyed a period of tremendous inventive energy during the 19th century. Some examples include Fulton’s steamboat (1807), Morses’s telegraph (1832), McCormick’s harvesters and reapers (1834),Colt’s revolver ( 1836), Deere’s steel plow ( 1837), Goodyear’s vulcanized rubber (1844), Howe’s sewing machine (1846), Otis and the elevator (1853), Drake and the first oil well (1859 –in Pennsylvania), Pullman and the sleeping car for long-distance railroad travel (1859), barbed wire (1874), Bell’s telephone (1876), and Edison’s light bulb ( 1879). In addition, the adoption from Britain of the Bessemer process of steel production in the 1850’s enabled the manufacture of steel which was 10 to 15 times stronger than iron and lasted 20 times longer.

Industrialization was also foster by the development of the concept of the corporation whereby stockholders faced limited liability for debts incurred, only to the extent of the stocks they held. The notion of trusts became evident later in the century, when industries attempted to control sources of raw materials, production and transportation under one super corporation. At the very least, heavy industries stimulated other such industries. Railroads greatly increased the need for timber, copper, iron ore, coal, etc., along with agricultural products, which in turn led to greater western settlement and immigration to the United States in general. The population of the United States doubled between 1870 and 1900, from 38,500,000 to 76,000,000, 12,000,000 of which was made up by immigration. This, of course, provided labor, investors, consumers, etc., for the expanding economy. It is estimated that between 1869 and 1898, 13% of national income went into further industrial expansion.

Railroads were instrumental in attracting settlement in the West. They created land bureaus, sent agents to the East coast and even to Europe to recruit settlers with promises of loans, free transportation and cheap land. Between 1870 and 1900, railroads brought 2.2 million foreigners to the trans-Mississippi West. Such newcomers were often misled about the quality of land and the ease of its development. Parts of the West experienced less rainfall than advertised and a lack of timber for construction and fuel. Thus, it was soon realized there was a need for deep wells and irrigation procedures. Farmers could very easily fall into debt with mortgages and the unexpected cost of farming beyond tools, plows, wire, seed, horses, etc. Railroads also encouraged immigrants to specialize in cash crops: wheat, corn, cotton, tobacco; which were vulnerable to fluctuating world-wide market forces. To make matters worse, natural disasters could plague the farmers of the mid-West and West; storms, soil erosion, grasshoppers, etc. The federal government also encouraged western settlement with a series of Homestead Acts beginning in 1862, with the allurement of 160 acres for anyone willing to live on the land for ten years and cultivate and improve it. Unfortunately, most of such land ended up in the hands of greedy land speculators.

Currency reform accompanied the industrialization and westward movement of the nation. The Civil War provided a need for paper money to finance the war effort. Greenbacks (a paper currency supposedly hard to counterfeit due to its green color and use of cotton and linen fibers) established a federal currency helping to tie the nation together. The need to back paper currency in terms of face values worth of gold or silver required the establishments of new mints beyond the one in Philadelphia. The San Francisco mint, in the wake of the 1849 gold rush, and a Denver mint following gold and silver discoveries facilitated creation of the needed currency to abet the economic growth of the nation.

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