CONFLICT & CONQUEST Learning Target: I will be able to describe the changes that took place as Americans moved west from 1860 to 1900.

Essential Question Were the national government’s policies concerning the development of the West positive or negative for the nation?

Farmers Homestead Act – 1862  160 acres for $30 (must live on it for 5 years and improve the land)  Great Plains lacked significant rainfall  New idea – land had always been sold for revenue, now it was to encourage settlement)  Wrought with corruption  Promoters bought up best land (timber, minerals, oil)  12x14 “dwelling” – inches Improvement came with a new discovery  Many believed soil to be sterile  Once tough prairie sod had been cut through, the land was fertile

End of the Frontier 1890 – Census announces that all unsettled areas had been broken into and sparsely settled Frontier is Closed!  Inspired Frederick Jackson Turner’s essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”  “American history has been in a large degree the history of colonization of the Great West.” – FJT

Farming Transformed Farmers no longer grew their own food, made their own clothing, and bartered for goods Began growing “cash” crops – wheat, corn  Bought foodstuffs at general store and purchased manufactured goods in town or by mail order (Montgomery Ward)  Crops moved by railway Tied to banking, railroading, and manufacturing Mechanized agriculture!  Movement to cities, massive farms (grain factories)

Deflation Cash crop agriculture was dangerous  Hard times = bankruptcy  Prices determined by world output (competing with growers all over the world) Deflation was a key worry (1880s – 1890s)  Pay back more in value than what was borrowed Vicious Cycle  New technology = higher output = lower price = increased debt. High Interest rates (8-40%) on mortgages

Dismayed Farmers Mother Nature destroyed crops  Grasshoppers (1890s)  Floods = need for fertilizers  Droughts (1887) Government wrongdoing  Property over-assessed = higher taxes  High protective tariff Corporate wrongdoing  Harvesters, barbed wire, fertilizer (companies could raise prices  Storage rates Railroad wrongdoing  Shipping rates Farmers lacked organization  Independent-minded

Coxey’s Army & the Pullman Strike Panic of 1893 – depression – Populists argue that farmers and laborers are being oppressed by the economy and politics  Farmers Protest -- Coxey’s “Army” – relieve unemployment w/ public works programs – March on Washington, 1894 Pullman Palace Car Co. – Company Town – depression – cut wages by 1/3 (Didn’t Cut Rent)  Eugene V. Debs – American Railway Union leader  Cleveland sent troops on the grounds that strike interfered with U.S. mail Result  Calls of “government by injunction” (What’s this?) Business working to crush labor through courts

Gold v. Silver Election 1896  Republican: William McKinley (Gold Standard)  Democrat: William Jennings Bryan (Silver Stand)  Cross of Gold Speech – Dem. National Convention “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” Wins him the Democratic Nomination  Unlimited coinage of Silver at 16:1 (market was 32:1) Silver dollar worth about.50¢ Demo-Pop party Possible Results?

Election of 1896 McKinley wins Significance  Shift from agrarian dominance to the cities.  Fixed waged laborers had no reason to support inflation  Population of farms was dwindling (technology)  Republican dominance in the White House (16 yrs) (all but 8 of the next 36 yrs)  Victory for big business = increased tariff Gold Standard Act 1900  Natural inflation occurred with the discovery of new gold