The New South and Trans-Mississippi West

Southern Burden industrialization as one way to restore prosperity. cotton. Short of credit and cash tenantry and sharecropping.– left poor and in debt Crop leins Debt peonage low wages in southern agriculture made it difficult to attract skilled labor and enough outside capital to develop a more diversified economy. Why in poverty? Late industrializing Undereducated labor Isolated market

Life in New South sport and leisure vs. restrictive ideals of Christian piety. male and female domains the church was at the center of southern life laissez-faire approach to race relations, "Jim Crow" system of racial segregation. Newly erected legal codes forbade blacks and whites from mingling. Blacks could not compete for most jobs. The Supreme Court gave segregation constitutional authority in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). SEPARATE BUT EQUAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Western Frontiers different attitudes toward the natural environment Whites- exploit, dominate and tame. Indians' religious beliefs encouraged a view of the land as a complex web of animals, plants, and other natural elements, all with souls.- Can not be owned! difficulty of transportation, and scarcity of water. The Homestead Act of 1862 completion of the transcontinental railroad = settlement and development more attractive.

War for the West policy of concentrating on reservations. – Failed and violence erupts again. Battle of Little Big Horn –Sioux and Cheyenne trap Custer. Couldn’t stop flood of white settlers, disease, slaughter of the buffalo

Dawes Act, reformers tried to draw Indians out of communal tribal cultures and turn them into independent farmers. Land was terrible, children forced into boarding schools, land taken by Federal Government Hispanos in the Southwest saw their way of life challenged as, sometimes with violence, more often by legal and political means Anglos deprived Hispanos of their land and political influence. new wave of immigration from Mexico changed the character of the Hispanic Southwest.

Boom and Bust in West Silver and gold strikes Railroads enormous influence over the region's economic and political life. Cattle ranchers drove huge herds of steer to the new railheads large corporations to dominate cattle industry. Violence erupted between sheep and cattle interests, violent –blizzards and drought

Final Frontier cheap land under the Homestead Act expensive equipment Bonanza farms- go big or go home- HUGE DEBT! Farm families faced sod houses, prairie fires, blizzards, and rural isolation. the church, as in the South, offered some solace and social life. in the South, alienation from the mainstream of industrial America would breed resentment and, ultimately, political revolt.